Former Burundian president, Pierre Buyoya’s body was returned to his native country on Tuesday, more than three years after he was buried thousands of kilometres (miles) away in Mali.
Buyoya, who was credited with creating democracy in the small African country but was accused of being involved in the assassination of his successor, died of Covid-19 in Paris in December 2020.
Later that month, Buyoya, 71, was buried in Bamako, Mali, where he had worked as the African Union’s special envoy to Mali and the Sahel for the preceding eight years.
At the time, a senior Burundian government official stated that Buyoya had the right to be buried in his native country but would not receive the honours accorded to a former head of state due to the sentence imposed on him.
A source at Burundi’s main airport, Bujumbura, said the plane carrying his remains landed early Tuesday afternoon.
“In order to respect the deceased’s last wishes, the family has requested and received permission from Burundian authorities to repatriate and rebury his remains in his native country,” the Buyoya family said in a statement issued to AFP on Monday.
The reburial will be held in a private ceremony on Wednesday at the family’s farm in the southern town of Rutovu.
Buyoya, an ethnic Tutsi army colonel, rose to power in a coup in 1987.
He resigned in 1993 after Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, won Burundi’s first democratic elections and easily defeated him for the presidency.
He reclaimed the presidency in 1996, this time by a coup, and signed the Arusha Accords in 2000, which attempted to end the country’s horrific civil war. He stood down in 2003 as per the agreement’s conditions.
In October 2020, he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia together with 18 other defendants for Ndadaye’s assassination by hardline Tutsi soldiers after less than four months in government.
The assassination sparked a decade-long conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, with an estimated 300,000 people killed.
Buyoya initially described the trial as a “sham” but eventually resigned from his position at the AU, citing a desire to clear his name.
In 2015, riots and an attempted coup erupted over then-President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term. At least 1,200 people were killed, and 400,000 fled the country.
Nkurunziza, a devout evangelical, died abruptly in June 2020, shortly before handing over to Evariste Ndayishimiye, a hardliner who had won elections the month before and is still in charge today.